SEO, PR & Directory listings; can it be too much too fast

I read the suggestions everyone made on a previous thread that one way backlinks are the way to go and the easiest ones to get are on directories.

I remember reading somewhere that if a new site gets too many links too quickly the search engines might penalize for spamming.

Has anyone heard of this? I saw in the thread where someone mentioned hiring someone to submit their site to hundreds of directories.

I want to spend the next week or so building up my visibility; but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. Are their any general guidelines you folks use when you work on obtaining backlinks?

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Well YMC first of all welcome to our small community

About the links, even if you don't have many of them, they will start counting as "ranking" links after some months. For Google the pros say that this is for about 8 months. This way Google prevents the well known google bombing.

For the guidelines that you ask, I only found one good (regarding links). It is allways better to get your first links from high ranked pages (whenever is possible), and allways submit your site to the small directories because they accept you instantly

Hi and thanks for the welcome.

Came here by way of sitepoint and "Show us your directory thread"

So if I understand then, any links I do create may not show up for 8 months. Wow. I didn't know that. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I already have some backlinks showing up on MSN and try to be patient.

Your last point was to submit to high ranked pages and the small directories. Typically, won't the smaller directories not be highly ranked?

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I meant that you should start with the high ranked, and continue submiting to small directories.

Also 3 way linking is another good way to raise link popularity (I forgot to mention before)

Is it important whether or not the directory has any pagerank?

Several of the ones I am seeing may have PR on index page but none on the directory pages themselves. Does this matter?

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Well it matters if the directory has pr.

But the high pr directories have also a very big queue list, meaning that in order to be accepted you will have to wait for months. And for the best directory of all(dmoz.org) you can wait years.

A good example is also our directory(thetopsites.net) We have pr 5 and right now there are about 3.000 sites in queue.

So what I advice you is to submit to the major ones to get some quallity links, but also submit to many small ones, as they will list you instantly.

OK, that's what I thought.

Thank you.

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OK, that's what I thought.

Thank you.

You are welcome

The bottom line about linking is that Google et al do not want us to be messing up their rankings (The rankings are theirs, remember?).  They cannot keep us from linking for rankings, because they have no way of judguing intentions, only results.  So they will do their best to counterbalance the most obviuous attempts to manipulate their rankings.

What does this mean for you?  Make the link-building look as natural as possible.  A brand-new site getting three links from PR5 sites looks awefully suspicious.  Getting 100 links in a single week for a site about "cement" would also look suspiscious, whereas getting 100 links for a site about "Janet Jackson" in a week would not...if she was in the news that week (and Google would know!).

Also, when it comes to directories, PageRank is nice, but what really counts are the search terms you use.  Just make sure the interior pages are actually cached by Google. 

About the links, even if you don't have many of them, they will start counting as "ranking" links after some months. For Google the pros say that this is for about 8 months. This way Google prevents the well known google bombing.

I have seen some of the links to my site show up pretty fast - less than 1 week. Was I lucky?

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Amabaie :
  1) I agree with you
  2) Welcome to our small community. Glad to have you here

I have seen some of the links to my site show up pretty fast - less than 1 week. Was I lucky?

The link popularity algorithm of G seems to be very very complex. From my experience I can say that g somehow calculates if you should have the ammount of links that you have in conjuíction with the rate that your incoming links grow.

For instanse if a site published and gets one incoming link per week is ok. But if in a matter of two months the site gets about 100 links, those links will start indexing with a delay.

Let me give you a real life example. My main site (www.thetopsites.net ) published before 1 year. When it was started, it got about 1000 incoming links from another site. Those links are haven't added to the index yet, and every week one or two are getting indexed.

Another question...

Many of the directory sites allow names (which seem to become the link) that differ from the site name. While I realize this is a perfect place to put keywords; it can also be a place to impact where a site is listed on that directory.

In your opinion, is it better to link on keywords or use less powerful link text to get onto a page with higher pagerank? This refers to when the list within a category is alphabetical by default.

My first backlinks came from here and SP.

It was comical. When I signed up here, I wasn't sure how to do my signature; so I changed it a few times. Well, apparently 8 times. As each edit was listed as a backlink.

Thank goodness, they have since fallen off the list.

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In your opinion, is it better to link on keywords or use less powerful link text to get onto a page with higher pagerank? This refers to when the list within a category is alphabetical by default.

I think that the best is having keywords on your listings. This way you get a better placement in the SERPs.

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